Boys.

Monsters

is what i like to call them.

Humans

just so far from normal.

Love games

are where they go big.

every boy

has the same game

yet every girl

experiences it different.

break hearts

is what they do.

fill the empty spaces in your fingers

is what they are meant for

yet they dont want to be like that.

too cool

to be around you and his friends.

if only...

there was a boy

that wasnt ashamed of you

and filled the empty space

in your hand.

Change is Irresistible

Just recently, I experienced what I like to call a "love triangle." Megan, Diane, and I went to an opening for Partners in Rhyme. As the music was setting in the mood, we started talking which lead to changes we want to make in life. Changes that will effect our future for the better and not the worst. We want to be the girls that every wants to be. The ones with good grades but can still have a great time without drinking and getting into trouble. That is who we wanted to be.

We then got into the topic of how other girls are depriving themselves from their family to do stupid things. This just looks horribly all around. "The only way to help them is to pray for them," Megan said. Which is true, we honestly can't help them one bit. This is what got us furious with ourselves. We were the ones doing that to our family's and to our own friend's. I just felt like the worst friend ever. The worst daughter in fact. We all just wanted to change for the best.

So we decided that we are now going to let our inner child shine and forget what the "other teens" do. Have our own fun without the whole reputation. We are going to be those girls that every parent wants their son to date. That will be us starting this summer. From now on Diane, Megan, and Tori will be better, smarter, and wiser younger girls!

how to live through teen years.

learn to accept who are you. stay confident.

respect yourself. don't let others influence your choices.

peer pressure is the common enemy. you are beautiful no matter what.

every flaw is like a pebble at the beach; it makes you YOU.

do what is best for you and not others. have love in your life.

remember what you do know will effect the future. don't sweat the small stuff.

be a kid. laugh a lot. deprive sleep and dream often. have fun.

take a road you have never gone before.

don't be afraid to take the other side of the fork in the road.

show who you truly are and don't be afraid to shine!

79 days of Summer

SUMMER OH'10

wear your swim suit every day. walk around bare foot. jump off the pier. ride a tandem bike with your best friend. live at the beach. go kayaking. play golf off your roof. party till you get enough. kiss your cat back. dance in the middle of the street. wake up early to experience sunrise. sneak backstage at a concert. be adventurous. have an ice cream eating contest. eat a whole foot long at subway. have a cook out at the beach. plant a tree. be a bad ass and accept the consequences. shred the nar. take the ferry to downtown. find your summer love. do a lemonade stand. lax for lyf3. sneak out and don't get caught. sleep under the stars. give long hugs. chuckle a lot. be a true friend. go on a run. play hide n' seek with the cops. dream a lot but never sleep. pretend your Michael Jackson. have a tea party. wear a dress. drink gallons of sweet tea. blast country music from your house. have everyday be earth day. give a little. meet 5 strangers on one block. make the biggest sundae ever. believe. only worry about not having fun. wear socks with sandals. eat at claytons and put quaters in the juke box. go on Dr. pepper runs. cuddle. have courage. be different. surf with the dolphins. find your inner child. have a sword fight. box with your guy friends. try something new. climb a tree to new heights. pretend to be a dolphin in a pool. laugh until you cry. go with the flow. kiss someone new. listen to drake for one whole day. beach and sunglasses. sunburns. Aloe Vera. wake up feeling like p-diddy. talk in animal noises for a whole conversation. no shoes, no shirts, no problems. don't wear underwear. skateboard everywhere in town. living with sand in your room 24/7. handlebar others around town. deactivate facebook for a week. watch every harry potter movie in a day. volunteer. find a lost pet's home. play childhood games. email an old friend. experience the old days. play with sidewalk chalk. refresh. make up your own drink. go to a padres game. dress up and go out to diner. forget what school is. don't regret anything. learn from your mistakes. camp out in your courtyard. rekindle the love. you only live once. share this with one you love.

this is posted on the floor of the gazebo at Spreckles and a parking meter!!!

The Letter of a Lifetime. (grade)

A couple years back my father would serve in the Iraq war for 90 days then come back on leave for 90 days. It was a long, nerve racking experience for me and for him. I would receive letters from him about every couple of weeks when he was away in Iraq. These letters let you see who he was missing and how he felt about this whole idea of war.

There is one letter though that is quite special to me. One that I will cherish for ever and ever.

I received it in 5th grade during lunch at the time. Reading it was quite impossible without a tear. I decided to seal it back into the envelope and read it at a time when I was alone. A time where I could truly just shed tears. Once I read the letter I couldn't stop sobbing. A picture of him kept fluttering through my head repeating lines from the letter. Lines that were the most breathtaking, memorable sentences.

One of them read, "Well Doddle, I have more work to do, so I just wanted to say help and to tell you that I LOVE YOU!!!"

I would have to say the part that hurt me the most was when he was describing the place where he lives. A tent with a bunch of others guys without running water. It was a nightmare! No showers and porta-potties. He said he hadn't been gone (hah yeah right) and could use a shower. To me this reveals what a total nightmare it is over there. It shows how much dedication he and his crew have to protect our country. I mean I definitely wouldn't stay in a tent with no running water at all. But for them it was a feeling of accomplishment. A feeling that will stay with them forever and ever.
For this blog post I had to recently take out this letter. Which I haven't taken out since January 13, 2004. When I read it and analyze it, it is so much more than just a letter. It is a bunch of words that reveals significances of the war. The major thing that it reveals is the significance of a human being. Now not a human fighting in the war but a family member or civilian. When reading this letter I can feel my dad's tension and how he will feel like a failure if he doesn't come out alive. It shows how much one family member can influence a soldier's mind. He wasn't only fighting to protect our country but to protect me and to show me how great of a dad he is. It is just like in "The Things They Carried" when Tim O'Brien doesn't want to tell his daughter about him"killing" the young boy. He doesn't want his daughter to see him as a killer or failure. That is exactly what this letter reveals. It shows how tough my dad wants to be just for me. Its like memories of me are running through his head when he is suiting up for the battlefield, getting him ready to show who he really is. This letter is a letter of a lifetime and tells so much in so little, by just reading in between the lines of the writer.

Situations. (grade please)

(In this journal, well sort of a diary entry, I will not say what happened exactly, knowing it will just create problems.)

Dear Journal,

Expect the unexpected.

Something to always keep in mind. Not too long ago something drastic occurred with a guy. Something that I will always look back on, regretting it everything that happened. Wanting to move on but not being able to. Waking up and dreading it each and every morning. Asking myself, why did I even get involved with this type of guy. I mean yes I have heard what a nice guy he is, but then I heard of his "other side". Where he is basically the biggest "inappropriate word" ever. But of course I had to find out the hard way; by getting screwed over.

A couple of my friends and I decided to go to another friends house. Lets call him Joe. Well Joe had a lot of friends over and we all thought it was going to fun and games. We all were totally wrong. I got into a sticky situation with Joe that will always be in the back of my head. Something that will effect all of my future relationships with guys.

Now, not only did this hurt me mentally but it made me think how guys really are in today's society.

I mean yes the majority of guys are great. Always there for you and make your days better. However, once you get into some kind of a relationship with them it is like they turned evil. They take advantage and end up just hurting the girl. Not every ones' relationships turn out this way, but the majority of them have.

So are guys just out there to get what they want and then dump us girls off on the side of the road?

I guess this question will never be answered until we all find the "one".

I just wish it wasn't such a painful thing to deal with. I mean does this whole "love" thing only hurt us to show that they aren't the one?

Ever since this incident happened to me, I get all these questions that seem to be unanswered. I really just wish that guys start treating girls up to their standards and quite treating them like dirt. I guess I just get offended what guys do from what happened to me. I just don't want that to happen to any other girl. It was painful and depressing. I am just glad I had friends that helped me get through it. Helped me carry on, just like in Tim Mcgraw's song. "What don't kill us makes us stronger, so carry on".

Tori.

friends or enemies. that is the question? (grade please)

4. Analyze the power dynamics of some aspect of Coronado High School. Which groups have power? Which groups do not? Why is this? How does it effect our school or you personally? (Feel free to use the language of target, ally, bystander, perpetrator if it helps you.)

Coronado High School. Population almost 1000 students.

Target: gingers, nerds, "slutty ones"

Ally: CoSA!!!

Bystander: pot smokers, nerds, preppy

Perpetrator: popular, bullies

Everyday is a battlefield in the quad. Glares cornering every ones' eyes.

Everyday a redhead gets called a "ginger". Walking to class and then ginger is yelled at among the hall. The only ones to stop it are the smart ones, CoSA people.

Then gossip going down in every class room. Everyone is a part of this even the teachers.
There is no ally in this situation.

So why is it that people do what they do?

Well, the "sluts" get talked about since people have nothing else to talk about in their "boring" lives. The gingers are made fun of since they are different from all of us. Now the nerds are picked one because everyone is just plain jealous. They are smart and have everything.

This makes me feel horrible. Writing about it makes me notice how much I participate in gossip or calling red heads ginger. Now I ask myself how do they feel about this? This makes me want to be a better, friendly person.

If just everyone is caring and accepting, there would be no harm to anyone.

Think about this quote before you put someone down. "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, a honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

T-$w!zzl3 (grade please)

Tay Swift, Taylor Swift, T-Swizzle, or known as hottest of the hottest to many guys. Every song she writes either describes the perfect moment you had with your boo or about the best moment going completely wrong. This to me is the best art of all arts. It simply lets us get away from our stresses by being able to relate to a famous person. Taylor's songs reveal that our society is that every girl is not perfect, even the famous ones. She does this by focusing on problems she went through in her high school years. However she also gives advice to these girls which really strikes me. It gets me thinking that our society really does rely on harmony. From a personal experience I had it helped me determine what our society truly needs; music. Anyways, I was going through some typical boy issues. (what is new ha) I just brought some Tay up on my ipod and everything was alright. I don't really understand the reason to this, but if we had to live without music I know for sure I wouldn't survive. This reveals the fears of our society; well most of our society. Our fears as teenage girls are boys, boys, boys, and then our girlfriends. Not only does Taylor but most music helps us get through our tough times and what we fear by giving us motivation to stand up for ourselves. It also gives us confidence to believe in us and that we deserve a way better man than the boy that screwed us over. Another point Taylor covers about the society are our desires. Every teenagers' desires are to have the perfect Prince Charming. Taylor sings about this in about every song of hers. It gives us girls motivation to look for Mr. Right and that it is not going to come upon us just like that. Our society would not survive without music or any other type of art. We would have teenage girls with problems not knowing what to do about them. That would lead up to feisty guys. So I am clearly not sure how Wilde came up with the opinion that art is not a necessity. To me it is a way to live though life stress free.

The Perfect Barbie (grade please)

Lately I have been wearing my gender role lens to search for a topic for my blog. I found some interesting articles and t.v. shows. However the magazines and Oprah show struck my mind about how low women gender roles are. Many teen girls look through magazines such as Seventeen and Cosmo to pass time. However, has anyone really scanned the content in those magazines? Some of those articles are just criticizing girls alone. The article I read titled "20 Things a Guy Looks for in Girls." It was all about "you can't be to skinny but you can't have some rolls," how you need to be "flawless" and "that blond is the way to go". Those were the top things a girl must have to get the perfect guy. This is sort of like a Perfect Barbie scenario. Where if the girl is blond, beach tan, and has a curvy body; they will have a man such as Chace Crawford. This is just wrong. A girl shouldn't be judged on how she looks. So why write an article about?
Now put your gender role lens on and lets take a double look at this article. When you look upon this article with those glasses, it screams patriarchal society at me. Saying that women need to be a Barbie just to get a man. Now a days, men just need to flex a muscle and girls are all over them. It's crazy! This is criticizing how much work women put in just to get a guy that will possibly screw them over. When they can be their selves and I am quite sure get a loyal boy in their life.
Another scenario is when I was watching Oprah today. She was interviewing nuns and questioning them about their lives. She came upon the question "So are you a virgin and how does this affect your love life?" Well the nuns said for most part their boyfriends' were very supportive. However when you take this back to the article, I am sure no man would want to date a women who shows no skin or is "married" to Jesus. It shows how women in gender roles are based upon just looks. If you think about Megan Fox, guys basically only want her for her body and luscious lips. I'm sure, her being the hottest girl in American doesn't help either. This to me is insane. To know that girls' gender roles are lower then male gender roles makes me think; what is it that girls do to make themselves much lower than males? The answer is being needy. If a woman didn't have the need for a guys' attention then she wouldn't be trying as hard as she is to look good and attempt to be flawless.

my christmas gift!

Christmas is the time where people receive presents and cook cookies for Santa. Well I would have to say that this year, Christmas has been really different. Not getting really expensive stuff or everything I wanted on my list was not at all a disappointment. I simply got a gift that was priceless, getting to see my family and my best friend, dad. My family and father are one of a kind. From playing Apples to Apples at four in the morning or jamming out to rockband, we are the family everyone wishes they had. Not being about to see them for about 10 years, just killed. However it killed even more not being able to see my dad for 6 months. He is my best friend and the best of the best dads. Seeing him walk around these days is a miracle and a lifetime idol for me. To tell you the truth I am quite surprised my father is still around, no offense to ya dad. However, if I recall my dad, Thomas Foote Sr., barley survived from a cardiac arrest.(his heart stopped for 20 minutes!!!!) He also went through a very tough divorce; not that it was hard to leave but lets just say in simple words my monster in law was a huge bitch. Last but not least, my father rarely ever gets to see his own kids. This has to be a heart breaker for him and I still have not figured out how he does it. Getting to see my dad, who has basically went through 50 years of a lifetime in one year, was one of the best presents I could ever receive. Getting to see him be happy again and choose to not let the small things interfere with his life made me think how much a hero he is to me.

Okay, enough about my dad. Receiving this special gift may not tell you what kind of person I am, but if you think about it hard enough I am sure you can figure it out. I may not be one of those teenagers who cares about having a horseshoe on my ass or having the best of the best. I am simply a girl who just cares about her family and enjoys life as it comes. So just forget about having to have the best and most expensive stuff, because the only thing that matters is the relationship with your family. You never know when you might receive a surprise as great as mine!